"The Spear" depicting Jacob Zuma with genitalia in the open has been vandalized
image: zapiro.com
A
painting supposedly of South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma showing his
genitals and the subject of a court challenge by the ruling African
National Congress party has been defaced at a Johannesburg gallery.
Two men smeared paint on the portrait, known as “The Spear,” which depicts Zuma in black, yellow and red in a pose similar to one in which former Russian leader Vladimir Lenin was frequently shown in Soviet propaganda posters, footage broadcast on eNews Channel showed today.
The South Gauteng High Court was to hear an application to have it removed after the ANC said it infringes on Zuma’s constitutional right to dignity and privacy. The party will continue with its application on principle as the president had been humiliated, spokesman Jackson Mthembu said in an interview.
ANC supporters gathered outside the court to protest against the portrait. The South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, both of which are ANC allies, condemned the image. The gallery had refused to take down the painting, which forms part of artist Brett Murray’s “Hail to the Thief II” exhibition, as this would be a form of censorship.
“It’s rude, it’s crude, it’s disrespectful, it’s racist” because it shows blacks as objects, Gwede Mantashe, the ANC’s secretary-general, told reporters in Johannesburg yesterday.
The Johannesburg-based City Press newspaper has kept an image of the painting on its website because ANC demands to remove it are “a march away from progressive politics to patriarchal conservatism,” editor Ferial Haffajee said in an editorial.
The painting had been bought by an unidentified person in Germany for 136,000 rand ($16,450), the Johannesburg-based Sunday Times reported May 20.
via bloomberg.com
Two men smeared paint on the portrait, known as “The Spear,” which depicts Zuma in black, yellow and red in a pose similar to one in which former Russian leader Vladimir Lenin was frequently shown in Soviet propaganda posters, footage broadcast on eNews Channel showed today.
The South Gauteng High Court was to hear an application to have it removed after the ANC said it infringes on Zuma’s constitutional right to dignity and privacy. The party will continue with its application on principle as the president had been humiliated, spokesman Jackson Mthembu said in an interview.
ANC supporters gathered outside the court to protest against the portrait. The South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, both of which are ANC allies, condemned the image. The gallery had refused to take down the painting, which forms part of artist Brett Murray’s “Hail to the Thief II” exhibition, as this would be a form of censorship.
“It’s rude, it’s crude, it’s disrespectful, it’s racist” because it shows blacks as objects, Gwede Mantashe, the ANC’s secretary-general, told reporters in Johannesburg yesterday.
The Johannesburg-based City Press newspaper has kept an image of the painting on its website because ANC demands to remove it are “a march away from progressive politics to patriarchal conservatism,” editor Ferial Haffajee said in an editorial.
The painting had been bought by an unidentified person in Germany for 136,000 rand ($16,450), the Johannesburg-based Sunday Times reported May 20.
via bloomberg.com
"The Spear" (photo via ewn.co.za)
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